1. Field
This invention relates to business transformation, and particularly to methods, systems and computer program products for improvement of vertical process merging by reconstruction of equivalent models and hierarchical process merging.
2. Description
Business transformation performs strategic alignment of business and information technology (IT) to deliver enduring on-demand value of continual business innovation and improvement. Business transformation includes several challenges including: 1. analysis and modeling of business strategy and operations to drive business transformation; 2. efficient generation of an IT solution from a business model using techniques from Model-Driven Development (MDD) of software systems; and 3. monitoring and dynamic management of business performance for continual improvement.
Often, in business process models, process merging scenarios include two or more process models that are brought together in order to create an improved business process. One scenario for process merging is the improvement of an existing process model (AS-IS model) by a reference model where some parts of the existing model are preserved and other parts are replaced. Process merging is also used when companies become subject to acquisitions and mergers. In such situations, processes are aligned at the business and IT level. However, differences are also identified and preserved if appropriate. A third scenario arises if two or more different versions of the same process model are to be integrated.
Existing solutions and tools do not offer support for iterative merging of business process models. In particular, they do not address the problem of process merging in the absence of a change log, and they do not show changes in a hierarchical form and with dependencies between changes clearly visualized.